Love

 

Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabethan poet and playwright once asked –

Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?

This quote can conjure up a mass of mixed attitudes and feelings towards love, and the experiences which people have had with people that they had felt strongly for. For myself it details how I feel about the person I am with now, and since setting eyes on him five years ago I have had strong feelings for him. We lost contact for about three years on bad terms, only to come into our lives once again in August last year and begin something not only special, but evocative to others that it is possible to give someone a second chance and be truly happy.

It is possible to love someone and not feel a deep spiritual connection with them. I had been with an ex-boyfriend for about 13 months, and not once did I feel as I do now with Stuart since September 2008. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that ‘sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.’ For myself this constitutes the importance of finding someone whom you cannot live without, not just someone who you love and know is good to you. I know this is easier said than done for a fact; negative attitudes towards relationships are often evoked because of one’s lack of self-esteem. I have many friends who feel that they are not good enough to be loved, and so either go down the route of sexually offering themselves to anyone who shows a remote interest for the evening, or burrowing their head in the sand and feeling extraordinarily lonely. Do these people have only themselves to blame? Or is it society as a whole which encourages unenthusiastic connections with love and sex?

A promiscuous person is someone who is getting more sex than you are. – Victor Lownes.

Whether or not you agree with this statement is a matter of opinion. But it appears to be the case that those couples who explore each other both mentally and physically create an unfathomable connection. I'm not implying that those who believe in sex after marriage are wrong, everyone is entitled to do what they wish, nor am I claiming that a stranger you have a quick fumble with in the toilet cubicle of the club is going to become your soul mate. What I am trying to get across is the fact that if you allow yourself to loose your inhibitions with your partner, if you do things which you have never done before, (this doesn’t exclusively apply to sexual intercourse, general daily things also) you will find a side to yourself that you never knew you had.

I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. - Alfred Lord Tennyson.

If you allow yourself to become immersed in the happiness that you experience with someone and overlook the possibility of a broken heart, not only will you worry less, but you will enjoy the moment, the times that you have together and the experiences you share. It is said that we cannot allow others to love us until we have truly learnt to love ourselves.

 

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you — Roy Croft